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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#421

Post by bunderbunder »

lsh wrote: post #411
brongondwana wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, as a self-hoster your email is much more prone to metadata analysis than anybody who is hosted at one of the big providers and has most of their email transferred to other big providers down TLS-protected port 25 streams.

This would be a privacy Vs anonymity tradeoff, right?

They're not cleanly separable. You can tell a lot about a person by simply looking at what's written on the outsides of the envelopes in their mail. No need to actually open them up and read the insides.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#422

Post by doon123 »

maltalex wrote: post #270
rajuvegesna wrote: post #94

Zoho Mail is a strong option. Comes with mobile apps, supports all standard protocols (IMAP/POP/ActiveSync), includes Calendar and many other modules. Zero tracking. Zero ads. Beyond Mail, Zoho offers several apps that can replace most of what Google offers. From Docs to office suite, note-taking to chat and many more. (Disclosure: I am with Zoho)

Zoho is great for two more reasons: 1. Their free offering comes with support for custom domains, which is pretty unique. 2. There's Zoho.com and Zoho.eu. You can open your account on Zoho.eu if you prefer having your email hosted in the EU.

Hi, you clearly seem to be affiliated with Zoho... Here is your comment from 6 days ago ..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18008334

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#423

Post by vbezhenar »

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #368
vbezhenar wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using my own domain, so it's $5 per month. Considering that I'm using VPS for less than $1 per month, that price seems absurdly high. I would consider paid mail for $5/year with 25GB storage and fastmail features, otherwise free mail looks much better.

> VPS for less than $1 per month What kind of VPS are you getting for less than $1 a month?

256 MB/25GB/IPv4. It was black friday deal, but you can get similar price from arubacloud AFAIK, probably even with better specs.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#424

Post by csomar »

rgovostes wrote: post #23

I'd like to switch to Fastmail, but I have a handful of seldom-used secondary accounts (e.g., for family members), and it doesn't make sense to pay $5/mo/each when they're free on G Suite. Their pricing structure is designed for organizations or single users, but somehow my use case falls in between. It seems a bit off that my household can stream as many movies as we want for $11/mo, or have unlimited access to an e…

> and it doesn't make sense to pay $5/mo/each when they're free on G Suite.

It is a matter of perception. Your family members probably pay that $5 for a random coffee at starbucks. If you value your time and privacy, you'll be able to put that $5/month aside.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#425

Post by beagle3 »

bensonn wrote: post #332
pmorici wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail has a photos/files/website feature so it isn't just email. I use G suite now for my side business and I've never used any of the features besides email since I have Office on my machine.

ZOHO! FREE PLAN - Up to five users. 5GB/User, 25MB attachment limit. This is to have all 5 users in one "organization". ZOHO offers full G-suite replacement, free. They have many more applications too. I used the free plan for a few years, then started paying $24 per year for more storage. What you get for $24 per year is amazing. What you get with the free plan is amazing. Their business model is to impress you with…

Do note that the free plan is web only these days (no pop/imap) which is a showstopper for many.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#426

Post by ahje »

brongondwana wrote: post #406
ahje wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you're absolutely right, details that are sensitive in nature should be encrypted using end-to-end encryption. Otherwise you won't be safe regardless of email provider, as the other correspondents will often be using a US email provider anyway. If your threat model includes an actual threat from organizations like the NSA, then I'd say you have bigger problems than the choice of email provider. EDIT: I self hos…

Interestingly, as a self-hoster your email is much more prone to metadata analysis than anybody who is hosted at one of the big providers and has most of their email transferred to other big providers down TLS-protected port 25 streams.

Absolutely! Everyone has their own usage case, and one has to adapt accordingly -- even me! :)

My point was that simply selecting an email provider outside the US does not make email safe in any way and that end-to-end encryption is the only way to prevent providers from accessing the content.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#427

Post by gruez »

pierreprinetti wrote: post #108
kayoone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe https://posteo.de/en (Berlin based) would make sense for you or your family accounts ? It's just 1 EUR/mo for basic accounts and they focus on privacy, security and being sustainable.

Those are the guys that don't let you use special chars in passwords "in order to prevent unintentional wrong password entries". Also, it doesn't work on your domain.

>Those are the guys that don't let you use special chars in passwords "in order to prevent unintentional wrong password entries".

is that really an issue? using all the special characters (assuming uniform distribution) gives you ~33% more entropy[1] for the same amount of characters, at the expense of increased input time (especially on touch keyboards) and being much harder to remember. why not just make your passwords 33% longer instead?

[1] according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascii85

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#428

Post by pbhjpbhj »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #250
ggm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market Bzzt. Notice how everyone recommended fastmail and nobody else? It's not a highly competitive free market. It's "hi, can anyone recommend a MacBook cheaper than the one apple make" time. Free markets reductionism not useful with no serious competitive pressure

Email seems like more of a free market than most things considering the incredibly low barrier to entry. You can even host your own email server, you can't reasonably do that with a lot of the software that you use every day. Just because a particular provider is good and cheap and has a lot of satisfied customers doesn't make it any less of a free market.

>You can even host your own email server //

As long as you don't want deliverability to Gmail or Outlook addresses. Though you can pay for Outlook deliverability it seems. They're very pinickety about allowing mail through from self-hosted or even low-traffic shared hosting IME [albeit limited].

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#429

Post by your-nanny »

brongondwana wrote: post #406
ahje wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you're absolutely right, details that are sensitive in nature should be encrypted using end-to-end encryption. Otherwise you won't be safe regardless of email provider, as the other correspondents will often be using a US email provider anyway. If your threat model includes an actual threat from organizations like the NSA, then I'd say you have bigger problems than the choice of email provider. EDIT: I self hos…

Interestingly, as a self-hoster your email is much more prone to metadata analysis than anybody who is hosted at one of the big providers and has most of their email transferred to other big providers down TLS-protected port 25 streams.

would you expand on this please?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#430

Post by fovc »

lvillani wrote: post #86

FastMail. It's one of the few third party hosts to support push email on iOS with the native Mail app (it's a custom protocol based on APNS), since Mail doesn't implement IMAP IDLE [1]. They are also the main sponsors behind the JMAP protocol [2] and some open source projects such as the Cyrus IMAP server. [1]: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-... [2]: https://jmap.io

Just to provide some balance to the feedback: I've been using FastMail for 2 years and am mostly "meh" on it. My issues are with the web interface (which is largely why I use them instead of running my own server):

- No delay send/undo send. Allegedly in the works for ages

- Very buggy editor. Randomly slows to a crawl while composing, scrolls up and down erratically

- Cannot handle very long threads very well. (since unfortunately the business world uses top replies with Html email) E.g., undo can pin a core and crash the page.

- Notifications randomly show up twice and then freeze on screen

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